The heavy silence in the fortress was a palpable thing. Selene felt the weight of Celestine's words press down on them all, each technical limitation another stone added to an impossible wall. She watched Aexl's back, the rigid line of his shoulders, and saw his grand strategy, the one that had filled them all with such impossible hope, crumbling into dust. The air, thick with the scent of cold metal and disappointment, seemed to choke her.
Seven days. Aexl's promise to Lyeona echoed in her mind. Seven days felt like a pipe dream now, a cruel joke. The man who had seemed like a god of war just moments ago now seemed trapped by the very world he sought to conquer.
"General… is everything okay?" Selene's voice was a small, hesitant thing in the oppressive quiet.
Aexl turned, the motion slow, deliberate. A faint smile touched his lips, but it didn't reach the cold, calculating depths of his eyes. "Yah. Everything is fine. We just have to think of another way."
Selene's own hopes faltered. "I know it's hard," she muttered, her gaze drifting towards the distant village. "That gate has never been knocked down before. Even in the time of our ancestors, it was a feat no one could accomplish easily, that's why this place is heaven for refuge like me but it turns out to be a prison. Worst of all, those orcs used sorcery to protect it. Fireballs and fire magic have guarded that gate since they took it from our warden."
Aexl just smiled, but his mind was a thousand miles away, drifting through battlefield calculations and logistical nightmares. He knew the story. Lyena had told him everything. But as his mind plunged deeper into the problem, a flicker of a new plan, a mad and audacious strategy born from sheer desperation, began to form. He glanced at Celestine, and in her smiling, knowing eyes, he saw that she was already there with him.
They were in parallel, two minds on a single, impossible track.
He looked at Selene, his voice ringing with a sudden, commanding authority that snapped the tension in the air. "First, I'll show you that no gate can stop me from getting what I want." He stepped closer, his shadow falling over her. "And the days that this side of the wall will be your prison will be over." He smirked, leaning in to capture her lips in a brief, possessive kiss. He pulled back just enough to whisper against her ear, his voice a low chuckle, "Just be prepared for the reward."
Rina, standing nearby, was utterly dumbfounded by the whiplash of the scene she had just witnessed.
"Celestine," Aexl muttered, his attention already elsewhere as he tapped the Ephone's cold screen. The device hummed to life.
[Armory] > [Withdraw]
Item: Battle Axe, Qty: 250
Item: Mace, Qty: 250
A cascade of light filled the room, and with a series of heavy, metallic thuds, a mountain of simple, unadorned axes and maces appeared on the stone floor.
[System Message: Daily Summoning Limit Reached]
"This will make do for now," Aexl spoke, his voice all business. "I think this is more than enough," Celestine replied, her eyes gleaming as she surveyed the pile of raw materials.
Rina cut in, her voice shrill with confusion. "For what? What do you need all those for?"
Then, in perfect, unsettling unison, Armenia, Celestine, and Aexl replied.
"For making shovels."
"Shovels?" Rina stammered, looking from the weapons to their dead-serious faces. "We're going to war, not digging farms!"
****
Aexl bid the three of them goodbye, his mind already on the next phase. He swung up onto his horse, pulling Selene up behind him, and they rode back towards the village hall.
The silence between them was heavy with unspoken questions. Even Selene, nestled against his back, was completely dumbfounded. As they rode, she finally asked the question that was burning in her mind.
Aexl only said, "You'll know soon enough."
The silence on the ride back to the village hall was thick with Selene's confusion. The rhythmic, heavy thud of Kentucky's powerful legs on the dirt path was the only sound for a long moment, the slight jostle of the cuckoo's gait a familiar motion. She finally spoke, her voice muffled against the fabric of Aexl's tunic.
"If I had known you would be needing material, you could have borrowed from the blacksmith," Selene muttered.
"Yah. We need more iron. A lot of it," Aexl replied, his gaze fixed on the path ahead, his hands resting on the bird's thick neck feathers.
"How many are you going to need?" she asked, her curiosity overriding her confusion.
"We need to forge a thousand heads for shovels and pickaxes," Aexl replied, his tone all business. "That's why we need the iron. We also need to build carts to haul everything. The wood for the tool handles and the cart frames isn't an issue; the forest is full of it. But the metal... that's our bottleneck. That's why we were going to ask Lyssa if she knew of any accessible mines."
At the mention of a mine, a flicker of something passed through Selene's eyes—a ghost of hope swallowed by a wave of despair. She sat up straighter.
"We have a mine," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "The elders call it the Mother Lode. It's supposed to have unlimited ores. It was our lifeblood, how we traded it with the Marked Ones, our warden..."
Her expression soured, her tone growing hard as she spoke the next name. "...and with Maerva. That scamming witch with a silver tongue and gravel in her gut."
Selene's hands clenched into fists. "When the orcs came, our trade routes were cut. We were isolated, starving. To survive, we had to shift our focus entirely, expanding our farms, trying to raise more cattle. But we had a problem. Simple wooden fences couldn't hold the larger beasts, and the cuckoos would just snap any rope we used to tether them."
She let out a bitter, humorless laugh. "We were desperate for a stronger material, something we could use to build proper enclosures quickly. And Maerva, she took advantage of us. She sold us a 'miracle.' A catalyst, she called it. Said if we placed it deep within the mine, it would magically draw forth the materials we needed."
She finally looked at him, her eyes filled with a grim finality. "Oh, it summoned something, alright. But it wasn't ore. It was a monster. First one, then another. Now, two giant spiders guard the Mother Lode.
"Spider?" The word cut through the air. Aexl pulled back sharply on the harness,in his mind "The solution to our problem is guarded by a spider." bringing Kentucky to a sudden, jarring halt. The large cuckoo squawked in protest, its head bobbing with irritation. Aexl turned, his eyes locking onto hers. "Do you know where this Mother Lode is?"
Selene, startled by his intensity, pointed a trembling finger western part of the Big mountain. "There. The Mother Lode Mine is west from here"
"Really?" Aexl didn't wait for confirmation. He yanked the harness, turning Kentucky's powerful body sharply in the direction she had pointed. The path to the village was forgotten.
"What are you doing?!" Selene cried, her arms tightening around him in alarm as the cuckoo shifted beneath them.
"Getting the material," Aexl replied, his voice a low growl of pure determination.
"Are you insane? That spider could kill us!" she warned, her voice laced with genuine fear.
Aexl spurred Kentucky with his heels, and the large bird broke into a ground-eating run, its powerful legs kicking up dust. His voice was a blade in the wind. "I'm desperate, Selene. And when I'm desperate, no spider will stand in my way."
"Let's go, Kentucky."
The ride was a blur of grim determination. Kentucky, the large cuckoo, ate up the ground with powerful strides, its rider focused on the objective with a predator's intensity. They arrived at the cave mouth, a dark gash in the mountainside, and Aexl saw the problem immediately. The entrance was sealed by a dense curtain of thick, white webbing, spun into a barrier that was both tough and yielding. His M9 Bayonet, a tool designed to pierce flesh and steel, struggled against the sticky, flexible fibers.
"It's dark inside," Selene whispered, her voice tight with anxiety. "Due to the Ignis Pyrite on the walls hasn't been maintained for a long time."
Aexl pulled out a torch. As soon as the heat licked at the strange webs, they didn't just burn—they hissed and melted like solder. Droplets of silvery liquid fell to the cave floor, cooling almost instantly into a hard, metallic substance.
"A new material..." he muttered, prodding a cooled piece with his boot. He reached out, touching an intact web strand. The fibers were incredibly strong... this really would be hard for a cuckoo to escape.
"It's the exchange we asked Minerva for," Selene explained, her voice a nervous whisper.
Aexl's mind raced with the metallurgical possibilities, but that was a problem for later. The objective was the ore... the "unlimited" supply this mine was said to hold. He pushed through the melted opening. As his torch touched more webs, molten droppings fell to the ground around them. "Better to turn this off," he decided, snuffing out the flame.
They were plunged into oppressive darkness. Aexl activated his Ephone's utility tool, and a brilliant white beam from its flashlight cut through the gloom. Selene gasped at the "magic wand" in his hand. He pressed a katana from the Ephone's limited armory into her trembling hands... MI6 a katana with 100% drop rate he muttered... while he kept the M9 Bayonet for himself.
As they moved deeper, the flashlight beam caught them. Two spiders, their bodies as large as barrels, clung to the ceiling. One was a nightmarish black, glistening with patches of gold; the other, a chilling cobalt blue. Their fangs, long and sharp as daggers, promised to snap a man in two. Selene trembled.
"You've fought orcs," Aexl said, his voice a low, steady rumble. "These are just bugs."
Her resolve hardened, but who wouldn't be scared? Their eight red eyes glared from the darkness, and below them, clinging to the floor and walls, were hundreds of smaller versions, a carpet of chittering, glowing red eyes.
"If things go wrong, you run for the exit," Aexl whispered. "And what about you?" Selene asked, her knuckles white on the katana's hilt. "Don't worry about me. I can manage."
Then, the cave erupted.
"Eek… eek … eek eek.." The sound was a high-pitched, chittering shriek that drilled into their skulls. "They're going to kill us!" Selene shouted as thick, viscous drools dripped from the larger spiders' fangs.
Aexl's stance shifted instantly, his body dropping into the familiar, deadly crouch of a man who lived with violence. The bayonet was no longer a tool but an extension of his will.
A sharp, clicking shriek echoed from the darkness, a wet, chitinous sound that scraped the inside of the skull. SKREEEEECH!
The swarm was a distraction. Before Aexl could even process the tide of skittering spiderlings, the Golden Spider launched itself from the ceiling. It wasn't a drop; it was a blur of black and gold, a projectile of malice moving so fast there was no time to react.
CLANG!
The force of the impact was a physical blow. The M9 Bayonet was ripped from Aexl's grasp, skittering across the stone floor and into the darkness. A thick, impossibly strong stream of webbing shot out, pinning his arms to the wall. But in Selene's horrified eyes, she saw something worse: the spider's razor-sharp forelegs had slammed into him, piercing his shoulders and pinning him to the cave wall.
"RUN!" Aexl's voice was a raw, guttural shout, a sound of pure, primal agony.
Selene screamed, a wordless cry for help as she scrambled backward, tripping over the skittering swarm and fleeing for the sliver of light at the cave entrance.
Aexl's mind, even through the searing pain, was a machine of cold calculation. Spiders don't necessarily eat their prey if they're full, he thought, the memory from some long-forgotten documentary a desperate lifeline. Hopefully, this one is full.
Then, in a brief, terrifying moment of clarity, the world slowed down. He saw the monstrous head of the Golden Spider loom over him, its eight red eyes reflecting the beam of his dropped Ephone. Its fangs, two glistening, dagger-like points of death, thrust forward directly toward his head.
"Arghh!"